Notes from AIGA's Portfolio Review

I’ve been joking for weeks about shattering the hopes and dreams of aspiring young designers at the AIGA Portfolio review but actually I found the kids to be pretty talented, serious about the industry and very open to feedback. The day really re-ignited my desire to get into teaching.

I was very impressed that so many kids had traveled in from Delaware and Salisbury on a Saturday morning, professionally dressed, to have their portfolios reviewed (by me of all people). On the flipside I didn’t get one student from MICA, which is directly across the street. Maybe they’re too cool to get feedback from somebody who didn’t go to MICA, or I’m too intimidating, or there were just not any assigned to me over the course of 4-5 hours, though that seems unlikely.

So with out further ado, the POSITIVES:

The State schools are getting better at cranking out workplace ready designers, the gap between them the private art school kids is continuing to shrink.

The program at Towson (where I earned my B.F.A.) looks to have greatly improved, apparently benefitting from some staff turn over. The students have a much stronger understanding of production than I had when I came out of there and the projects they were doing we much more complex.

INTERNSHIPS! Thanks to a down economy, cash strapped companies are more willing to give students a chance to work the for free. These kids definitely had more options available than I did. I wish a certain education company in Baltimore would be more open to internships – I could use some slave labor.

A lot of students are hungry for more and asked about Grad School. I did my best to talk several of them out of going directly from undergrad to a MFA program. Go out, get some real world experience make sure you love the job before you commit to getting another degree in it, you’ll get more value taking a web design class in 5 years when the technology has changed from what you learned in undergrad.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Can you call my dad and explain that to him for me?”

And the NEGATIVES:

Where is the web stuff? Too many students didn’t even have basic HTML skills, and even more disturbing many of them had no interest in the web at all. I find that hard to believe considering they mostly grew up with the Internet.

PRESENTATION!: A lot of work wasn’t mounted – when you have no experience the emphasis falls heavier on presentation. I hate doing it too, but coming out of school it’s not optional. No untrimmed 11x17’s in a manila folder folks.

Book Covers – this is just a pet peeve, but why does every design program have students go through pointless project? I almost NEVER comes up professionally and it’s in every portfolio. I’d rather see less exciting/more realistic project like a black and white print ad laid out in different size formats.

Where’s Bob? I figured I’d get at least 1 ‘Robert Gillespie’ type who’d argue with me when I told him something wasn’t working. Maybe it was just the format but none of kids seemed to know how to defend their work when it was attacked.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY

“Are you graduating this semester?” – question from a girl in her early 20’s who apparently thought I was student. SCORE!

WTF MOMENT OF THE DAY

University of Baltimore hosts a portfolio review, in the Art building, full of graduating designers all of which are asking about Grad schools and there was not a single piece of student work from the UB Pub Design program on display anywhere. It was a golden opportunity to promote the program and they missed it.

It certainly wouldn't have happened if I were teaching there :)

Design after 5p.m.

I know a lot of other print & web designers who literally eat and breathe the industry. They subscribe to all the magazines, go to all the lectures, start designer networking sites and keep blogs about typography. I’ve never been into graphic design on that level. I like it and I like to believe I’m very good at it, but I’ve never been able to keep up that much energy about it.

Maybe it’s because illustration was my first choice and I had to fallback on design when my stuff wasn’t good enough, or maybe it’s because heading into the 8th year of my career I’ve gotten comfortable working as an in-house designer. Either way I‘ve been getting concerned about how much longer I can keep doing this.

Recently, I finished an excruciating final semester of grad school. Between work and classes I was spending 14-18 hours a day rotating between my iMac and a coffee maker. My blood pressure was up and I was annoyed by just about everything and everyone. It was the very definition of ‘burnt out.’ So over the past month I’ve made some changes.

Change #1

Life as a Designer Ends at 5pm
No freelance, no blogs, no AIGA events (BLEND doesn’t count) and no bringing home my laptop for the weekend. I needed some time away from the industry and within a week I noticed a difference. I was starting to sleep better and had more energy. I was able to better plan my design projects knowing there was a definitive cut off to get them done.

Change #2

No More Glowing Rectangles
The Onion brought this one up. Taking a break from Photoshop wasn’t enough. I cut it all down as much as possible. Television, Internet, Wii, iPhone apps, EVERTHING. I was spending too much time sitting on my ass staring at screens.

I decided my yard was the best place to avoid temptation and got started on some exterior projects. I weeded out the front flowerbed, fixed the flagpole, did some landscaping and got some tomatoes growing in the back. Last week I started restoring my deck. It was a good work out the break helped me focus when I was at work. I found I wasn’t as fidgety sitting at the computer after all that physical exertion in the evening and on weekends.

Change #3

Find a Different Creative Outlet
This was something I had tried several times before but it never worked out, probably because I would always try something to similar to design. I enjoy drawing, painting and photography but that was too close. I gave writing a shot for awhile but it was still sitting in front of a computer. Finally the answer became clear –TACOS.

A lot of my current friends don’t know, but in a previous life I was in fact the fajita grilling, burrito rolling, wing frying , champion of the world. I even had my own belt at one point, though mine was made of old Natural Light cans. Now with out grad school consuming my life I have time to cook again. It’s a completely different creative outlet from what I do during the day and provides the mental rest I need to be fresh when I sit back down in that cubicle at 9am. 


BALANCE
I feel like these change have help me regain the balance in my life that UB had taken away. When I go to work now, projects are running smoother, I’m more comfortable sitting in front of the computer and my creative concepts have been getting stronger. It turns out I am still very interested in my career.

I still have another year with my current employer before I have to decide what direction I want go. Teaching remains of interest but more importantly I think it’s time to pick one aspect of graphic art to excel in. I’ve spent the past decade trying to know everything – print, web, video, Flash etc. and I feel that has lead to being good at a lot of things but not really great at anything.

Hopefully this blog will help me figure that out.

A Day in the Life – Baltimore Design Conference

I attended the first ever “Day in the Life” design conference at Maryland Institute this Saturday and while I think it has some potential I left unimpressed. It was somebody’s first attempt (I'm not sure who the organizer was) at putting a conference together so I will cut them some slack and probably give it another shot next year. But it has a long way to go.

The first mistake the organizers made was having a conference at 8am on a Saturday morning, I mean WTF were they thinking? If you want people to come to a new event you need to pick a friendlier time or have it during normal business hours so they have an excuse to get out of the office. I also noticed a lot of the attendees were students, and late April is a horrible time for them as they are gearing up for finals. I got the impression from the kids I talked to that the conference was either extra-credit or required for them and it most cases the only reason they were there.

The speakers were hit or miss, but that is to be expected at these things. Having attended HOW and AIGA conferences in the past I’ve learned that break out sessions are at best a 50/50 shot and it’s always smart to sit by the door so you can discreetly sneak out before a bad speaker puts you to sleep. I attended 1 session about social media and another about the business of design.

The social media session with Marisa Peacock was excellent. I’ve always been a bit skeptical about social media marketing but she gave it a lot of credibility. By the end of the hour she had left us with lots of tips about how to use Twitter effectively as well as ways improve upon our blogs to make them more Google friendly. She also gave us a ton of online resources for analyzing Twitters effectiveness.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same for Meg Touborg’s ‘Business of Design’ lecture. It was way off the mark and didn’t really talk about the design business at all. I felt like I was being coached to take out a loan and start a publicly traded corporation vs. getting tips on how to build my freelance base. She wasn’t a terrible speaker just a poor choice by the committee. She had no design experience and all her clients were in the ten million and up range. Not appropriate for the audience at all, especially with all the students in the room.

After lunch there was a panel discussion supposedly on the Value of Design lead by Bridget Sullivan, from Towson University. She’s not the most exciting speaker and she seemed to keep rephrasing the same 2-3 questions about branding over and over again. Coming in at an hour and twenty minutes this part of the conference was just way too long. People started heading for the door after about ½ an hour and that’s really the length it should have been. I should have sat closer to the door.

I didn’t stay for the ‘creative jam session’ afterward. It was a long day and I felt the breakfast and 1 hour lunch was more than enough time for awkward networking. There was supposedly an AIGA Blend Happy Hour at Red Maple(not sure why they chose such a horrible venue 2 miles away when there are bars literally across the street) but there was no way I was sticking around for that long. I ended up opting for a trip the famed Mt. Royal Tavern with a few other heads I already knew instead.

Hopefully this is just a starting point - Baltimore really could use an annual event like this for it’s design community, but there needs to be a lot of improvement if they want it to take off.


FINAL NOTE
I was really disappointed the Robert Gillespie and myself were the only people there representing University of Baltimore. I can sort of understand the lack of Grad and Undergrad students as the timing was horrible, but where was the faculty presence?
A design conference takes place practically on the campus and not a single one of them can be bothered to show up? What does that say about their commitment to the field? No wonder certain professor's relevance is constantly questioned.

Like the World Really Needs ANOTHER BLOG

Testing, Testing 1, 2, 3....

Welcome to the newest feature of KnowDesign.us the portfolio site of Mark Nowowiejski.

The plan here is to blog about what I'm working on, critique current graphic design trends and offer useful information to other designers.

While I'm working on that feel free to check out the new website currently under construction
at

http://www.knowdesign.us